On April 16th, the boys and I visited the NASA Space Center in Houston. To say it was amazing still doesn't do it justice. I had thought I read online that it opened at 9:00 am. I planned to get there about 15 minutes early. So...we did in fact pull into the parking lot at 8:47 am. Well...no one was working in the parking booth....but the gate was opened so I went ahead and pulled through to the parking lot. There were only 4 other cars in the parking lot. I was convinced we were in the wrong place....there must be another entrance and parking lot somewhere. I saw ticket booths outside so we decided to get out and see if we were in the right spot. No one was working in the ticket booth either. There was a woman cleaning the windows so I asked her if we were in the right spot to get tickets. She said that yes we were, but the center didn't open until 10:00 am. WHAT?!?! Ha! We were more than an hour early!! Needless to say, we beat the 'rush'.
By the way, I searched online for coupons for cheaper tickets. Couldn't find any. The commercials here in Houston for the Space Center say that you can get discounted tickets at McDonald's. I called all the McDonald's around us...none of them had coupons. A McDonald's employee told me banks and credit unions sometimes have coupons so I started calling banks. No one had them. Then....ding ding ding....I got an idea! Inside the campground office, they have one of those wooden shelves with all kinds of pamphlets for touristy things to do in the area. Sure enough, there was a pamphlet for the Space Center with $5.00 off per person....so we saved $15 by using that coupon! It cost us $46 for us 3 to get in.
After checking out TripAdvisor, I learned some tips on how to get the best experience while at the Space Center. Everyone recommended taking the Tram Tour first thing in the morning because it gets super crowded in the afternoon. Sounded like a good idea so that's what we did. The tram tour is an outdoor open-air tour, and rain was in the forecast for later in the afternoon. We not only beat the crowds, but we also beat the rain.
There are 2 tram tours. A Blue Tour and a Red Tour. The Blue Tour takes you to the mission control center and to the Space Park. The red tour takes you to the astronaut training facility and to also the Space Park. I really wanted to go to the mission control center, but I thought my boys would enjoy the astronaut training facility better. The red tour won. The things we do for love...
Tram Tour: See the man behind Sage?
He was such a nice man!
He was FASCINATED with the fact that we are a full-time RV family and was asking us all kinds of questions.
He was there with his co-workers from Lockheed Martin.
He taught my boys a new strategy game called, 'Sticks', that is played using your fingers.
Open-Air Tram
All the NASA facilities all sit like in their own little city.
There are 17,000 employees that work on the property.
There is even an agricultural farm on the property,
and we saw our first Longhorns!
Horrible picture, but this was our tour guide, Chris.
Our first stop on the tour was the astronaut training facility.
We went up on the second story so that we could look down on the whole facility. It was impossible to get a picture of how massive it was.
MIND BLOWN.
The Orion!
Check out the Spidernaut!
What I loved most about this place is that it isn't a museum.
It's where the astronauts really train!
There are tons of different mock-ups (models of spacecraft)
for the astronauts to train in.
Spidernaut!
So creepy and cool!
Our next stop on the tram tour was Space Park.
This is the Saturn V!!
It took astronauts to the moon!
This thing is massive.
Per Nasa's website:
"The Saturn V rocket was 111 meters (363 feet) tall, about the height of a 36-story-tall building, and 18 meters (60 feet) taller than the Statue of Liberty. Fully fueled for liftoff, the Saturn V weighed 2.8 million kilograms (6.2 million pounds), the weight of about 400 elephants. "
You can see me below the rocket reading a sign.
Makes me look tiny!
You can see the boys in this picture 'rough housing'.
They are constantly picking, picking, picking on each other.
After the tram tour, we ate lunch.
There was a food court area with 4 different restaurants.
I spoke with the manager about ordering Sage cheese pizza.
He even brought out the box for the dough so that I could read the ingredients to make sure it was safe for him.
Sage said it was the best pizza...well, 2nd to Jet's.
After lunch, we checked out the museum part of the center.
Scott's favorite part of the whole place was
definitely the 'Angry Birds Space' section.
GUESS WHAT? There was no crowd whatsoever!
The place was pretty dead the whole time we were there!
In the middle of the center,
there are kind a few items from 'Ripley's Believe it or Not'.
I thought it was odd to have these items in the NASA Space Center, but most of it was pretty entertaining.
Einstein made out of slices of toast.
Out in the middle of the center,
this lady was putting on a little science show.
Whatever they are paying her,
they need to triple her pay.
She was GREAT!
Scott got picked to go up on stage to help with an experiment!
His job was to try and blow up a balloon that was in a bottle.
(Couldn't do it...not supposed to be able to do it).
He got a bracelet for participating.
The kids are all playing with liquid nitrogen...the 'steam' from it.
She did experiments on liquid nitrogen,
Newton's 3rd Law of Motion, and air.
This guy was doing a presentation on
what life is like for astronauts in space.
Space toilet
An astronaut's own personal 'room'.
There is a sleeping bag that is attached to the wall on the right where they velcro themselves in when they sleep.
Wall of pictures of all the astronauts
since the NASA program began.
This is only half of the wall.
We learned about Scott Kelly and his brother, Mark, earlier this year. We'll be following along all this year with their Twins Study.
Be sure to read below to see what this Hawaiian shirt is all about.
You Go, Judy!
Totally not space related...
World's Tallest Man...almost 9'.
He was pretty freaky because he moved.
He stood up, sat down, and moved his head around.
Next up, we went inside the Spaceship Gallery
and watched a 17 minute movie that was compiled of lots of real video clips from astronauts in training and in space.
(Oh, and see that podium down in the right corner? With the cardboard JFK? The podium is the exact podium that JFK used when he talked about space exploration.)
The real Apollo 17!
This was our tour guide, Bill, in the Spaceship Gallery.
He knew 'things that textbooks don't tell ya'...(those were his words).
Real moon rocks!
There was a moon rock there that we could actually touch.
It was smooth. (Didn't feel any different than any other rock :-)
See the triangle?
That's the moon rock we could touch.
Walking inside a mock-up space ship.
Look up in the left hand corner?
See the person upside down in a ball floating?
The had models to show you how astronauts do certain tasks...like take a shower.
Waste Management
Sleeping Compartment
(I would not survive such tight spaces!)
See the guy in the ball?
He was really spinning around like he was doing flips in the air.
This was the food court around 3:00.
See no one there!
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